Surveillance and Digital Rights with Danny O'Brien

With the cost of surveillance and mass information gathering becoming cheaper and easier, laws are struggling to keep pace. Who is fighting for transparency and working to protect your digital rights?

Our guest today is Danny O'Brien. Danny has been an activist for online free speech and privacy for over 20 years. He co-founded the Open Rights Group and has defended reporters from online attacks at the committee to protect journalists. He is now the Director of Strategy at Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Show Notes:

• [0:59] - Danny began working with Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in 2005 but had been interested in them and digital rights overall since 1990 as a journalist.
• [2:18] - In the early days of EFF, the topics they were writing about seemed very theoretical to the everyday person. It became confusing, but a lot of these hypothetical situations were becoming reality in the early 2000s.
• [4:06] - The assistance Danny gave to journalists to keep them safer from online attacks began on a case by case basis.
• [6:23] - Danny explains that now they are seeing a rise in targeted attacks on journalists with government connections.
• [7:50] - The tools to conduct a spyware style monitoring of a particular person are now so ridiculously cheap. It can be anyone. In the early days, it always seemed like an attack was government based or done by professionals.
• [8:42] - Journalists in particular are highly targeted for attacks because they have likely upset someone they've reported about.
• [10:49] - When Gmail was hacked in 2009, it became apparent that the people that were targeted in that attack were Tibetan activists.
• [11:42] - There has been a shift into a professionalization of attacks. It is someone's job to clock on, hack and make someone's life unpleasant, and clock off.
• [13:10] - One of the key cases in the last several years in regards to digital privacy rights is the Apple San Bernardino case in which the FBI wanted a back door into the iPhone of a suspect in a shooting.
• [14:36] - There is a gray area where governments are saying that as long as they have the ability to do these things, they should.
• [17:16] - The globalization of technology has caused confusion and blurred lines on what is legal and illegal in each country.
• [20:25] - Danny gives an example of a loophole in United States law regarding getting geolocation data from phones.
• [23:13] - The process of getting information is very murky especially in the United States.
• [24:41] - We need transparency before we will ever see reform.
• [26:40] - Google would do something called The Creepy Test where they would demonstrate something they could do internally and determine whether it was something that could be used in a "creepy" way.
• [28:29] - Something may seem like a great idea but wind up causing more bad than good. Danny uses apps for tracking the pandemic as an example.
• [30:20] - As technologists, we are capable of acting very quickly and reaching for a toolkit that we can use.
• [31:19] - Sometimes we have to be careful that the solutions that are the simplest from a technological point of view aren't just shifting the complexity elsewhere.
• [34:02] - The consequences of simply uploading photos online in regards to privacy were very unexpected at the start of the internet and social media.
• [35:49] - In the 90s there was a strong fight against encryption. Now that encryption is what holds entire economies together.
• [36:08] - While encryption is useful, it is also being used by cybercriminals to hide illegal activity, particularly child pornography.
• [39:00] - We used to argue about digital rights but now all rights are digital. Now, all laws are about the internet.
• [41:53] - Danny and Chris discuss the passage of a bill about the digital rights of sex workers that had several unintended consequences.
• [43:12] - There is a big push right now to undermine encryption particularly for fighting against sex trafficking.
• [44:04] - There are a lot of problems that have been created that were unintentionally created by technology that needs to be solved.
• [45:06] - Large companies, like Apple, Google, and Amazon, have a lot of control of our personal devices.
• [46:46] - We will start to see a lot of technological compromises between large companies and the government.
• [48:44] - Pick the privacy tools and try out different tools to find what works for you. It exercises your right to remove trackers and ads from your web experience.
• [50:27] - In order to exercise your rights, you need to know them.
• [52:38] - People wind up being the consumers of technology and they don't become active citizens in this digital community. Education is important.
• [54:54] - Danny shares links to useful material to educate yourself on surveillance (listed in the Links and Resources).
• [57:21] - Sometimes, lawmakers don't know all about these technological problems, so write to your lawmakers when you have concerns.
• [59:30] - EFF is membership driven and a huge proportion of their funding is from individual members. If you are interested in becoming a member or donating to EFF, visit their website for more information.

Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.

Links and Resources:

• Podcast Web Page
• Facebook Page
• whatismyipaddress.com
• Easy Prey on Instagram
• Easy Prey on Twitter
• Easy Prey on LinkedIn
• Easy Prey on YouTube
• Easy Prey on Pinterest
• Open Rights Group Web Page
• Electronic Frontier Foundation Web Page
• Danny O'Brien on Twitter
• Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD at EFF)
• Security Education Companion (SEC at EFF)